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Act on Khadr, Harper urged

By Tracey TylerLEGAL AFFAIRS REPORTER

Mon., Aug. 13, 2007

CALGARY–Canada's largest legal organization is demanding Prime Minister Stephen Harper begin negotiating with the United States government to have 20-year-old Canadian terror suspect Omar Khadr freed from a military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and returned to face justice at home.

It is not enough, the Canadian Bar Association says, for the federal government to accept the Bush administration's assurances that due process is being followed at the U.S. naval base, described by Khadr's own military lawyer as a "modern-day Devil's Island."

Omar Khadr has been detained at a military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for the past six years. (August 12, 2008) (CP FILE PHOTO)

In a letter sent to Harper yesterday, outgoing bar association president Parker MacCarthy is asking that Khadr be released "into the custody of Canadian law enforcement officials" and returned to Canada to face due process under Canadian law.

With the possibility that Khadr could face a military trial next month, there's no time to waste, said MacCarthy, who drew a standing ovation after breaking into previously scheduled business at the association's annual meeting here to read from the letter.

It was written just hours after Khadr's American lawyer, Lt.-Cmdr. William Kuebler, came to the conference to appeal for the organization's help in pressuring for his client's release.

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The military defence lawyer encouraged the group to follow the example of legal organizations in the United Kingdom and Australia, whose lobbying efforts helped lead to the repatriation of citizens, in at least one case under a plea arrangement negotiated with the U.S.

Speaking to reporters yesterday, Kuebler called the letter "very encouraging" and "a strong step in the right direction."

"If the (Bush) administration is sincere that it doesn't want to be the world's jailer, you would think it would want to have Omar released," he said.

Describing Khadr as chained to the floor during their most recent meeting and in a state of rapid mental decline, Kuebler said his client – captured at age 15 and accused of killing a U.S. Special Forces officer during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan – is certainly not a war criminal but, at most, a "child soldier" brainwashed by his father, Ahmed, described as an affiliate of Osama bin Laden.

In his letter, MacCarthy said Khadr's status as a minor at the time of his capture only heightens the need for Canadian government intervention.

Having signed on to an international treaty on the rights of children recruited for armed combat, which stresses the need for rehabilitation as opposed to prosecution and imprisonment, Canada has "an obligation," MacCarthy said, to ensure it follows those principles when it comes to Khadr – the only Canadian and lone Westerner remaining in an Guantanamo prison.

Although Khadr has been locked up for five years and the bar association has in the past spoken out in the past against conditions at Guantanamo, the letter is the first the first time the group has taken up Khadr's case. MacCarthy frankly acknowledged that he was moved to action by the vigour of Kuebler's defence.

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"When I see lawyers who take on very unpopular cases and when I see Lt. Commander Kuebler standing up to not only the highest levels of government in his country, but the military establishment, I'm moved by the courage of that man," he said in an interview.

The U.S. government alleges Khadr threw a grenade that killed special forces Sgt. Christopher Speer.

There is evidence that Speer was killed while engaging in "an assault" but the U.S. government has taken the position that anyone who resisted the American invasion in Afghanistan was guilty of a war crime, Kuebler said.

A military judge dismissed charges against Khadr in June, ruling that military commissions set up by the U.S. government to try alleged war crimes did not have the jurisdiction to hear the case.

The Pentagon's appeal of that decision is scheduled for Aug. 24. Kuebler said if the appeal is allowed, Khadr could be put on trial as early as next month before a tribunal that operates according to rules that would be considered illegal in other Western courts of law.

It's worth noting that only foreign nationals can come before the tribunals and that America does not subject its own citizens to the process, he said.

While the bar association's response to Khadr's situation is in keeping with a recent Angus Reid poll showing a slim majority of Canadians now want the federal government to intervene on his behalf, yesterday's letter is still only "a start," said Kuebler.

While MacCarthy said he didn't want to overstate what the bar association might be able to do for Khadr, he was optimistic yesterday that securing his release will become a priority.

MacCarthy said he expects bar association officials will be speaking soon with law society members in England and Australia to learn more about their lobbying campaigns. The association is also consulting with Toronto lawyer Lorne Waldman, who represented Maher Arar, who was tortured in a Syrian prison after being wrongly suspected of terrorism by the U.S.

Waldman told reporters on Saturday there are some parallels between the Khadr and Arar cases.

"I can't tell you how disappointed I personally am, as a Canadian, in our government's complete abdication of responsibility to a Canadian child who's being detained in horrible conditions and being denied due process," he said.

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